Special Report: Red-pilled Poet, Charles Eisenstein
Charles Eistenstein has had quite the pandemic. Essays read by millions, retweeted by Jack Dorsey, quoted by Ivanka Trump, held up as the poet philosopher of conspirituality—hell, he’s even been on the podcast!
Given the response to this bonus episode, we've decided to release it into the wild as an important companion to Conspirituality 86. Julian tracks the transformative arc of malformed ideas garnished with spiritualized language that has made Eisenstein the romantic mascot of anti-vax, Covid-contrarian wellness. This is how he finds himself now poised to become the mythic storyteller-in-residence of an emerging Austin-based cult of psychedelic bro science and “medical freedom.”
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It's Julian here with a quick message regarding what you're about to hear.
This recording began its life as one of the bonus episodes we take turns creating and publishing every Monday exclusively for our Patreon supporters.
But every now and again, one of these episodes elicits a really strong positive response from within that community, including calls for it to be released for wider consumption.
And on these rare occasions, we consider doing so.
In this case, some combination of Charles Eisenstein's profile and influence, how this episode unpacks both the allure and the dangers of his themes, and the real-time unfolding of his collaboration with Aubrey Marcus seems to have resonated with our supporters as something important to share with a wider audience.
Now, of course, if you appreciate what you're about to hear, we hope you'll consider joining Patreon for more like this every week.
Without further ado, here it is, Charles Eisenstein, Red Pilled Poet.
As the pandemic has unfolded and here at Conspirituality we've sort of found our beat, There are two people whose work has been sent to me the most by friends and colleagues and acquaintances as examples of reasonable contrarian perspectives on the pandemic, on quarantine, on vaccines.
There are two people whose work has been sent to me the most by friends and colleagues and acquaintances as examples of reasonable contrarian perspectives on the pandemic, on quarantine, on vaccines.
The first is Zach Bush, who we've talked about a lot on the podcast, and he has a real gift of the gab and a way of just spinning very poetic, alt-med, environmentally savvy, Arguments for a way of looking at the pandemic that runs counter to the medical, the consensus of medical science.
And the other person is Charles Eisenstein, who comes at the topic from a more kind of spiritual philosopher point of view.
Now whenever you're listening to this Monday Bonus, it will have been recorded during the same week as a Thursday episode in which the three of us here on the Conspiratuality Team deconstruct a recent animated film published to the YouTube channel of Austin supplement entrepreneur and psychedelic spiritualist Aubrey Marcus.
And that nine minute film is scored by renowned ambient composer John Hopkins and features Charles Eisenstein narrating a sort of mythopoetic story he has written.
We found this video bizarre but also alarming in terms of it coming across as a piece of conspiritualist cult recruitment propaganda.
The Thursday episode will go into more detail on Aubrey Marcus and the Austen scene that Eisenstein seems set to inhabit, either geographically or spiritually, as a kind of resident philosopher and storyteller.
But today, I want to go a little deeper than time will allow on Thursday, into the journey of words and ideas that has brought Charles to this place.
I want to do this because I think it is emblematic of a certain type of conspirituality and it may illustrate what makes so many we know vulnerable to it.
I want to start by saying that I don't see Eisenstein as a villain and I don't think he's part of a deliberate conspiracy of some kind.
I do think that some foundationally bad ideas combined with a certain charisma and influence via sophisticated sounding and inspiring seeming language have led to a gradual escalation and a set of collaborative associations that perhaps shouldn't be surprising.
He's merely the latest influencer to paint himself into a corner during COVID.
Charles Eisenstein has positioned himself over the years as that rare creature, the spiritual intellectual.
of the spiritual.
Across his entire body of work, which includes several published books and a lot of online writing, is draped the repeated refrain that calls readers to move toward what he refers to as the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
This will come about by transitioning out of what he refers to as the age of separation created by modern civilization.
Depersonalizing technology, environmental carnage, a loss of contact with the sacredness of nature and the harmony of holistic ways of being, and what he frames as the failed promise of a scientific and top-down governmental solution to all our problems.
These are the expressions of our existential malaise during the age of separation.
You might be nodding along right now because he's not wrong on some of these observations.
He sees modernity as emphasizing the discrete and separate self and abandoning a sense of our interwovenness with the earth, one another, and indeed the cosmos.
Embedded in his despair at the state of the world is a utopian sense of what could lie on the other side of civilizational collapse.
If, as he suggests, political and environmental activism inevitably lead to frustration, then the more radical pathway beyond, and in quotes here, the ideology of separation that has created the human realm, lies in, quoting again, the reconception of our very selves.
When we interviewed Benjamin Teitelbaum for episode 82 about his book War for Eternity, we discussed how the esoteric traditionalist, that's with a capital T, traditionalist movement sought to bring about the return of a spiritual golden age By sowing chaos and restoring ancient hierarchies of power and caste.
Now, Steve Bannon and Alexander Dugin and Olavo de Carvalho all belong to this traditionalist movement and they, respectively, have been the trusted advisors of President Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Brazil's proto-fascist strongman Jair Bolsonaro.
The traditionalists have what some would refer to as an accelerationist agenda in that they want to hasten the downfall of the current structures of egalitarian democracy.
For traditionalists, this is based on a cyclical model of metaphysical time that they've borrowed from Hindu cosmology which passes through a golden, silver, bronze, and dark age.
You may have heard of the Kali Yuga if you move in yoga circles.
Each of these ages then dominated respectively by the four castes, the priests or the Brahmins, the warriors, merchants, and lastly the slaves.
Traditionalists see the Dark Age as being ruled over by the slaves and by a kind of egalitarian world in which there is a complete breakdown of the ancient structures that were in place during the Golden Age and we can return to that Golden Age, they believe, by creating as much chaos and destruction as possible during the Kali Yuga.
We can hasten a return to that Golden Age, but there are other kinds of accelerationists Two, like communist accelerationists want to drastically intensify capitalism and technological progress in order to bring about radical social change and thereby instantiate an egalitarian post-capitalist society.
And there are also accelerationist ideas on the far right.
These portray modern society as irredeemable and see violence as the only way to deconstruct the Jewish and multicultural New World Order and bring about a fascist ethnostate.
Though he may not have explicit sympathies with any of these ideologies, I want to suggest to you that Charles Eisenstein is more and more a kind of utopian accelerationist.
He interprets our current global crisis as an opportunity to create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, even if the passage to that beautiful world is really difficult.
Even if it entails buying into paranoid conspiracy theories, rejecting medical science, and potentially holing up in a psychedelic, spiritual, polyamorous medical freedom compound with armed guards on Lake Travis in Austin, Texas with Mickey Willis, J.P.
Sears, Del Bigtree, and Aubrey Marcus and whichever women can stand all of those pheromones.
Okay, that last bit is speculation, but by our analysis the odds are pretty good.
That that's where this is going.
But back to the accelerationist tip, because in a recent video, here's how he puts it in his own words.
This is one reason why many people I talk to, and I have this history myself, when the big one approaches.
The Y2K, the 2012, the financial collapse, the COVID even.
There's part of me that's like, yeah baby, bring it on because I want out of here.
We want to be liberated from the structures that have confined us.
The social structures, the economic structures, the psychological structures.
And so COVID comes along, and along with a lot of despair, a lot of suffering,
Not just the suffering of people who have been sick and have died and their families, that's there too, but also the suffering of people being locked down and masked and confined and, you know, losing their jobs, losing their businesses, the tens of millions of children who are facing hunger because of all this in the world, stunted children, starving children, like, this is massive suffering.
And there's also maybe part of us, certainly part of me, that finds some hope in this.
Because we were stuck, and now there's no guarantee that we will become unstuck.
But there's a possibility.
So much has changed.
It suggests to us, wow, maybe more can change.
This reality that we thought was fixed is malleable to our will, after all.
This may be a stylistic detail that grabs a lot of his audience.
It's an appealing argument.
Things were broken already.
Perhaps not only is COVID exposing the fault lines in our techno-capitalist nightmare, but maybe it can also enable us to consider how we want to move forward in light of how many have suffered both from the disease and from our imperfect attempts to contain and overcome it.
Sounds kind of hopeful.
With published book titles like The Yoga of Eating, The Ascent of Humanity, Sacred Economics, Climate, A New Story, and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, we find the visionary promise that this big thinker has a lot of answers for all of the world's problems.
But I want to read something to you now, so just bear with me.
Mainstream media and official organizations have been quick to recognize and counter the threat with travel advisories, quarantines, research funding, vaccine development, and heightened levels of vigilance.
Yet information about other kinds of threats that are just as deadly, such as pharmaceutical residues in drinking water, pesticide contamination, or heavy metal poisoning from air and water pollution, are usually relegated to alternative media, ignored, or even actively suppressed by are usually relegated to alternative media, ignored, or even actively suppressed by public Why is this?
The ready answer that comes to mind is economic.
The man-made threats listed above are byproducts of profitable activities by corporations who have tremendous political influence.
If we were to thoroughly address toxic contamination of our biosphere, our entire economic, industrial, medical, and agricultural system would have to change.
More deeply, a virus or other pathogen fits neatly into the basic crisis response template of our culture.
First, identify an enemy, some unifactorial cause of the crisis, and then go to war against that enemy using all available technologies of control.
In the case of a pathogen, control takes the form of antibiotics, vaccines, or antiviral agents, draining wetlands or spraying them with insecticides, quarantining infected individuals, and perhaps telling everyone to wear face masks, stay indoors, or restrict travel.
In the case of terrorism, control takes the form of surveillance, bombings, drones, border security, and so on.
Whatever crisis we face, personal or collective, our pseudo-instinctual tendency is to enact this pattern of response.
We just have to do more of what we've already been doing.
We just have to extend the reach of our control-based civilization a little further, control things that hadn't been under control before.
Thus, the machinery of containing or conquering a disease coincidentally aggrandizes agendas of social control generally.
It justifies, exercises, and develops control systems that can be turned to other purposes.
Now, contrary to first impressions, that's not writing about the current pandemic.
That's from a 2016 essay called Zika and the Mentality of Control.
And he concludes that essay like this.
Until we begin thinking in holistic terms, we will lurch from one enemy to the other, forever suppressing symptoms even as we worsen the disease.
The questions above have no easy answers, but a good first step would be to pull back from the paradigm of dominating the enemy, controlling the other and conquering the self.
And look with fresh eyes at everything we do from that paradigm.
The drones.
The prisons.
The security state.
The war machine.
Antibiotics.
Pesticides.
Genetic engineering.
Psychiatric medication.
Debt payment.
Extraction.
Domination.
Including domination of othered parts of ourselves.
Threads through our entire civilization.
It isn't working so well anymore.
Now I imagine that already the worldview here is apparent and perhaps familiar.
And if you're like me, it probably arouses a certain amount of sympathy.
It's a familiar way of thinking about the world, and rightly bemoaning the inhumane ways we treat the planet and one another.
We can no doubt also see how this already existing perspective from 2016 is then readily applied to the coronavirus some four years later.
But something really stands out to me here, and it's this.
Eisenstein writes as if he has an expert analysis on all the topics he covers.
But while he may make a coherent argument or have a valid reference point on one topic here or there, he's very quick to generalize that principle to other topics.
This is what our friends at Decoding the Guru's call being a galaxy brain.
Essentially, it's the style of presenting oneself as a polymath who has worthwhile things to say about everything, regardless of training or qualification.
In this case, he's a spiritual galaxy brain, I think, who specifically uses metaphorical abstractions to create the appearance of sophisticated analysis, all of which rests on what are actually quite simple-minded New Age cliches, like the age of separation, or not othering the virus, which reminds me, in a way, of how Louise Hay encouraged gay men to think about the HIV virus during the AIDS crisis in the 80s.
Eisenstein also relies on a common go-to in alt-med wellness circles.
It's the claim that mere Western medicine only addresses symptoms, while other, more holistic, indigenous, exotic, and appropriated modalities address underlying causes more effectively.
And he then transfers that as a metaphor across to other topics like psychiatry, farming, prisons, and war.
Boiled down, he may be right about how the surveillance state and the machinery of war preserves global imperialism, but dead wrong about how to deal with pandemics.
But if the metaphor is carried over with enough artfulness, it may seem like both conclusions support one another or prove one another.
Many readers will find the extended metaphors blend all arguments into one which just intuitively can feel right.
It can feel revelatory.
Now there's a posturing here that I recognize from my own young adulthood and it's very self-satisfying.
Identify the things that are wrong with the world and elide their complexity by claiming that they all result from one mistaken approach that my special intuitive insight can correct.
This is the poetry of the half-baked spiritual galaxy brain and it helps to have an impressive vocabulary.
Okay, what of more specific conspirituality themes?
Well, for those, we can go back to a 2013 essay titled Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order, where he suggests that the loose ends in conspiracy theories, for example about the JFK assassination or 9-11, might be explained by, drumroll please, the guiding spiritual force of synchronicity.
Eisenstein posits conspiracy theories here, in general, as representing an alternate history of the world, based on ominous coincidences that seem to not otherwise be explainable.
To illustrate this, he does a quick thumbnail sketch of the Jewish banking conspiracy, the Deep State.
...and belief in an alien-controlled Illuminati bent on establishing a New World Order, before assuring the reader that his purpose is not to debunk these theories based on facts, evidence, or reason, nor to quote-unquote uphold the dominant historical narrative.
Instead, he proposes a third explanation.
Herein may lie an important truth encoded in conspiracy theories.
Not a factual truth, but a mythological truth.
There does seem to be a conspiracy running inside my psyche that keeps me enslaved to fear and greed, that indeed possesses technologies of mind control that presents the whole world through a filter of lies that is associated somehow with the reptilian part of my brain that manipulates me to serve an agenda inimical to To my authentic happiness, everything that the Illuminati are purported to do to the world we do to ourselves.
Could it be that when we see an evil cabal controlling the world, we're actually seeing the projection of our own egos?
And because our collective institutions mirror the prevailing psychodynamics of our time, could it be that the story of the New World Order conspiracy, despite its flaws, gives us a window onto some important truths about our society?
I want to interject here and just say, I'm about 70% with him so far.
It's a bit of a stretch, but you know, it's interesting.
He continues.
But there is more to the story.
What if, in addition to predisposing us to see patterns that aren't there, Our emotions and beliefs actually attract experiential data that fits them.
What if, for example, the psychic energy beneath conspiracism organizes events to fit into a conspiracy pattern, so that it looks like a conspiracy, even if there are no actual conspirators?
I am saying, these patterns of events are drawn to history because we need them to flesh out conspiracy theories and give expression to the psychological energies driving those theories.
Alright, I'll read that again.
These patterns of events are drawn to history because we need them to flesh out conspiracy theories and give expression to the psychological energies driving those theories.
It's as if events organize themselves around some kind of field that makes them appear to have a causal linkage even when they do not.
Okay, we ended up somewhere quite unusual.
This impulse to interpret conspiracy theories as containing collective mythic and psychological meaning is perhaps appealing to anyone steeped, as I have been, in Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell, or dare I say, even philosopher-turned-famous-and-charismatic-renegade-psychiatrist R.D.
Laing.
who famously led his team of psychiatrists in 1965 at Kingsley Hall into living in amongst their hospitalized mental patients to try to make sense of their psychotic and schizophrenic states from a shamanic and symbolic perspective.
It's from him that we get that popular romantic quote I'm sure you've heard which says, insanity is a perfectly rational response to an insane world.
But in the end, doesn't this trivialize mental illness and oversimplify reality?
I think it comes from overplaying the hand of social constructivism and extreme relativism that, in the laudable name of reclaiming the dignity of mentally ill people, goes all in on denying distinctions between mental health and mental illness altogether.
Over the course of five years, Lange's Kingsley Hall was home to meditation, all-night therapy, LSD trips, role reversal, and marathon Friday night dinners with visiting mystics, academics, and celebrities.
This was all going on in a sanitarium where no antipsychotic drugs or restraints were used and everyone was free to come and go as they pleased.
In keeping with the title of one of his best-selling books, The Politics of Experience, here everything, including the definitions of sanity and insanity, were being questioned.
Lange rejected all medical, biological, or genetic diagnoses and treatments in favor of a social theory of how psychosis emerged and could be understood and exercised.
The results were chaos, violence, plenty of feces on walls and bodies, freaked out neighbors, patients drumping off the roof, and Lange by one account going through a mental breakdown himself But let's pull back from that tangent.
Of course, conspiracy theories are not evidence of clinical psychosis.
But they are probably just as likely to deliver profound mythopoetic meanings and signposts to the more beautiful world we know as possible as the word salad of paranoid schizophrenics.
Even though they may draw upon evocative archetypal imagery, it's not the case, for example, that the QAnon fever dream will one day be studied alongside Persephone's descent into the underworld or the myth of Seth and Osiris.
The ideas from that 2013 essay by Eisenstein, Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order, find their resurrection then, in May 2020, with his essay The Conspiracy Myth, which was retweeted by Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter.
Here he suggests that rather than debunking conspiracy theories as false in literal terms, we would do better to interpret them as containing allegorical mythological truths.
Mainstream society, he says, rejects conspiracism but is itself hypnotized by another delusion, the myth of separation.
Here he quotes paranormal researcher and author Rupert Sheldrake in an anecdote about how so many people have had experiences that lead them to believe their dogs may in fact be psychic, as an example of how scientists suppress truths that run counter to the existing narrative.
And I just have to add here again that we have a rather silly and perhaps cute New Age example being used to argue for a really important seeming larger claim about scientific knowledge in our cultural context.
Charles suggests that the conspirators in this case, who are suppressing the truth about psychic dogs, are not people, but the culture, the system, the dominant story.
He says.
Just as, in bioterrain theory, germs are symptoms and exploiters of diseased tissue, so also are conspiratorial cabals symptoms and exploiters of a diseased society.
A society poisoned by the mentality of war, fear, separation, and control.
This deep ideology, the myth of separation, is beyond anyone's power to invent.
The Illuminati, if they exist, are not its authors.
It is more true to say that the mythology is their author.
We do not create our myths.
They create us.
Pretty interesting idea.
I'm not sure it means that much.
But did you notice he referenced bioterrain theory?
It kind of easily slips by in amongst the other pseudo profound poetic phrases.
Here's that sentence again.
Just as in bioterrain theory, germs are symptoms and exploiters of diseased tissue.
I hate to tell you, but he's referencing germ theory denialism.
This usually takes the form of arguing that Louis Pasteur's mid-19th century model of infectious disease was simply wrong, and Antoine Béchamps was right.
This despite the fact that Basham's theory was completely disproven, along with terrain theory and germ theory as the currently accepted way of thinking about disease after over a century of experimental method and observation.
When Charles references terrain theory, he's talking about the idea that it is the conditions within the organism that causes disease, not the identified pathogens themselves.
Now specifically, he's directly referencing Antoine Béchamp's argument that germs were attracted to the environment of diseased tissue, rather than being the cause of it.
But Pasteur showed that microorganisms caused beverage contamination, for example, and if killed, would prevent it.
As microscope technology kept improving, the surgeon Joseph Lister then prevented infection of compound fractures in bones by using carbolic acid to exclude atmospheric germs, and then physician Robert Koch identified the organisms that cause tuberculosis and cholera.
This all happened over a roughly 50 year period as the science progressed and germ theory led to doctors washing their hands in between cadaver dissection and attending women giving birth or performing surgeries.
It led eventually to the creation of antiseptics and antibiotics and antivirals and, you guessed it, vaccines.
But the holistic-sounding idea of terrain theory dovetails with the popular observation nowadays, which is true, that we can maintain health in some ways by stress management, diet, and exercise up to a point.
Completely healthy kids who have not been vaccinated are still vulnerable to all the deadly and disabling childhood diseases that are largely unheard of in countries with high vaccination rates.
Likewise, plenty of otherwise healthy, young, fit people have died of COVID-19, even though the elderly, immunocompromised, and obese, yes, Joe Rogan, are more at risk.
Anyway, the terrain theory of Béchamp that competed with Pasteur's germ theory circa the 1850s and lost was not just today's mild-mannered common sense about good health.
It specifically postulated that microbes were not the cause of disease, but other wholly imaginary organisms called microzymas Which only became pathogenic when some change in the bodily terrain made them so, were the cause of disease.
This was wrong.
And medical science simply moved on from it.
Needless to say, a more general holistic idea of terrain theory is invoked all the time by many an alternative practitioner claiming to have the cure for what ails you in the form of an organ cleanse, or an unproven supplement, an ionic footbath, or expensive alkaline water machine.
Wellness, after all, is the pursuit of the mental and bodily conditions in which sickness does not occur.
Which really is fine if we're just talking about getting enough sleep, eating healthy and exercising, while getting your medical checkup each year, your colonoscopy, and following best practices of medical care when suffering any actual serious illness.
But where I part company with wellness advocates is when they either claim to be able to prevent or treat serious illnesses or contradict medical science based only on galaxy brain metaphysics and contrarian experts.
For many, During the pandemic, this maneuver has been the gateway into more outlandish conspiracy theories that have trended towards extreme libertarian right-wing paranoia and disconnection from reality.
In case you think I'm unfairly lumping Charles Eisenstein into this trend, let's return to the conspiracy myth because here he also directs his readers to flesh out their perspective on the pandemic by seeking out the voices of anti-vax pope RFK Jr.
Former Dr. Christiane Northrup, who says COVID vaccines are tracking devices that will turn us into enslaved half-animal chimeras.
And of course, fellow germ theory denier and alt-med evangelist COVID profiteer, Dr. Zach Bush.
Now prior to the conspiracy myth, Eisenstein really had his breakthrough moment with his March 2020 essay called The Coronation.
Very interesting and I would say poorly thought out play on words about the coronavirus.
The Coronation.
Which was very widely read and circulated.
It reached over 15 million followers on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle.
And in June of that year, Ivanka Trump quoted the coronation in a video commencement address recorded for Wichita State University Tech.
She said, quoting Charles, COVID-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality.
When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal.
Now that speech was ultimately cancelled in response to student backlash against having Ivanka Trump be involved with the university, but it can still be viewed online.
She recorded the video of it.
In The Coronation, which is very early on in the pandemic, Charles ranges over wide subject matter.
But this section really stands out to me because here he outlines the main elements of emerging conspiracy theories about the pandemic.
And remember, this is before he publishes The Conspiracy Myth.
Here's what he writes.
The theories.
There are many variants.
Talk about Event 201, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, the CIA, etc.
last October, and a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation white paper detailing a scenario called Lockstep, both of which lay out the authoritarian response to a hypothetical pandemic.
They observe that the infrastructure, technology, and legislative framework for martial law has been in preparation for many years.
All that was needed, they say, was a way to make the public embrace it, and now that way has come.
Whether or not current controls are permanent, a precedent is being set for tracking of people's movements at all times, because coronavirus.
The suspension of freedom of assembly, because coronavirus.
The military policing of civilians because coronavirus.
Extradjudicial indefinite detention.
Quarantine because coronavirus.
The banning of cash because coronavirus.
Censorship of the internet To combat disinformation, because coronavirus.
Compulsory vaccination and other medical treatment establishing the state's sovereignty over our bodies, because coronavirus.
The classification of all activities and destinations into the expressly permitted and the expressly forbidden.
You can leave your house for this, but not for that.
Eliminating the unpoliced, non-juridical grey zone.
That totality is the very essence of totalitarianism.
For all I know, one of those theories could be true.
However, the same progression of events could unfold from an unconscious systemic tilt toward ever-increasing control.
Where does this tilt come from?
It is woven into our civilization's DNA.
For millennia, civilization, as opposed to small-scale traditional cultures, has understood progress as a matter of extending control onto the world, domesticating the wild, conquering the barbarians, mastering the forces of nature, and ordering society according to law and reason.
The ascent of control accelerated with the scientific revolution which launched progress to new heights.
Progress in quotes.
The ordering of reality into objective categories and quantities and the mastering of materiality with technology.
So who knows if this long detailed list of conspiracy ideas are true, he says, but underneath them all is this romantic age of separation and control story that is my diagnostic for everything that was wrong with the world already.
Okay, so we'll move more quickly now, now that I've established the dominant themes.
What follows will be a quick rundown of some of his voluminous content since those first two very influential essays.
I'm going to use this to paint the picture of his escalation from these first principles.
So there's an August 2020 essay titled The Banquet of Whiteness.
This is quite something.
He argues that Stella Emanuel, remember her?
She was part of the America's Frontline Doctors and she's that doctor that was originally from Cameroon, I believe, and got her medical degree in Nigeria.
Then came to the U.S.
and was a doctor but also an evangelical preacher and she was the object of a lot of public ridicule because after appearing on the steps of the Supreme Court with America's frontline doctors and saying that hydrochloroquine was the cure for coronavirus and we didn't need to do anything else, Then it came out that she had made statements previously about demon semen causing medical conditions.
Yeah, you heard me right.
Demon semen, the sperm of demons, causing medical conditions.
And so Charles refers to this in The Banquet of Whiteness as representing ontological imperialism that rejects the medicine of other cultures.
In December of 2020, the essay is called From QAnon's Dark Mirror, Hope.
And it argues that it's important we see incels, QAnon followers, and Trumpists as all being as worthy of our compassion as oppressed minorities.
And bear in mind, this is 2020, we're coming out of the summer of the protests and the George Floyd murder.
He's talking about Stella Emanuel, this banquet of whiteness, so he's making some attempt at Reflecting something back that's happening in the zeitgeist.
And then in this essay in December, we should have as much compassion for QAnon followers in cells and Trumpists as we do for oppressed minorities.
In the same essay, he casts the left-leaning culture as also being involved in its own kind of cult, right?
Not just the people on the right.
And then he talks about how we should be skeptical of narratives of established power, and he cites government disclosure of how they've been covering up UFO sightings as a good reason for this skepticism.
The last sentence of this essay is, let the unlearning begin, and that sort of neatly ties into his four-part video course available through the website called Unlearning for Change Agents.
So let the unlearning begin.
We'll move to February 2021.
The essay is titled To Reason with a Madman.
And here, the escalation is really accelerating.
He says that democracy is over, and it looks today like the left is beating the right at its own game.
I'm quoting here, it looks today like the left is beating the right at its own game, the game of censorship, authoritarianism, and the suppression of dissent.
He cites Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi as brave journalists who are willing to call out the cult of the left.
And in this essay, Charles says he doesn't believe that there was widespread election fraud, but if there was, it would surely be suppressed.
The next month, Source Temple and the Great Reset is an essay that chronicles his visit to an intentional community in Brazil rooted in the teachings of our friends Adi Da and A Course in Miracles.
He says that these folks exemplify what it might be like to quote-unquote make love visible in the wake of the coming Great Reset.
In June 2021 comes the essay, The Death of the Festival, and he says, quoting, We should not be surprised that Western societies are showing signs of mass psychosis because of the lack of festivals, especially during COVID lockdowns.
This leads, he says, to riots, toppling statues, and other acts of symbolic violence.
That same month, fascism and the anti-festival posits COVID as a form of religious hysteria that is not truly scientific and relies on ritual practices and ideas.
In fact, he says here, science is not different than other religions.
Conspiracy theorists are heretics of the religion of medical science.
And as with other forms of fascism, science is now used as a religious basis for the quote-unquote reflex of control.
It's one of his repeated ideas.
In July of 2021, the essay is titled Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed.
And now we've really jumped the shark.
It starts with a Goebbels quote.
He argues that the unvaccinated are the new scapegoats and compares them to blacks under Jim Crow and innocent Afghan villagers after 9-11.
He says the unvaccinated are the new sacrificial subjects and then references debunked claims of vaccination causing new variants.
It doesn't.
He compares the ostracizing of the unvaxxed to Nazism.
And here's the quote.
Then, as now, science was a cloak for something more primal.
Here's a quote from a September 2021 essay, A Temple of This Earth.
one essay, A Temple of This Earth.
He says, let's say I want to stop the technocratic plan spearheaded by Bill Gates to monitor, inject, track, and control every human on earth and feed their biometric data, movement data, and real-time physiological data into a centralized database that can issue privileges and real-time physiological data into a centralized database that can issue privileges and restrictions that keep
It's not entirely clear here if he's being literal or just proposing something, but that's pretty detailed.
He then goes on to call for both anti-vax and pro-vax partisans to come together in the spirit of compassion.
So that summary brings us full circle now to December 7th, 2021.
This is the day of the release of the animated video collaboration with Aubrey Marcus that is scored by John Hopkins.
It's called A Gathering of the Tribe, and it takes about nine minutes to tell a convoluted story of an enlightened alien tribe that uses shamanism to send emissaries to Earth to save us during this calamitous time.
I'm going to save any clips from the film for the Thursday episode.
But the synopsis is that these alien emissaries will forget their true origin.
However, intuitive knowing will guide them toward manifesting a more beautiful world.
This is a kind of hypnotic recruitment invitation to those who feel alienated and anxious but hold idealistic spiritual hope to find their tribe via face-to-face gatherings in special places, the video says, that will launch a new phase in which your mission flowers into consciousness.
The animation ends with a transition into Charles and Aubrey Marcus sitting together and saying, here we are, here we are.
Implying that they are waking up to their identity as these alien tribal emissaries.
The next day sees the release of a podcast episode that just picks up right where they left off with Aubrey and Charles.
It's titled, Can We Repair the Collective Mistrust?
And there's a quote from the very beginning of that discussion where Charles says, I was trying to play it safe.
Taking refuge in a pretend ambivalence or pretend doubt, where, after all, I can never really know for sure, so I'm not going to commit.
There's the time when you know what your truth is, but you're not stepping into it.
I was playing it safe with philosophical bypass, looking at both sides and accepting, accepting, accepting, but right or wrong, I just can't play it safe anymore.
I have a little something extra for you now. - Wow.
I'm going to end with Charles speaking in his own words at an in-person, indoors, unmasked community gathering.
It's a video with just a couple hundred views that I found on a tiny YouTube channel from this past New Year's Eve.
It's a small group, probably less than 30 people, in what looks like a small yoga studio or a large living room with a wood floor or a large living room with a wood floor that doubles as a small yoga studio.
The title of the video identifies the location as Resonance in Ithaca, New York.
There's a promo video for the event hosted on the same channel that just has 76 views and it says that only 100 tickets are available and listed the event as featuring live music, catered dinner with Charles, ecstatic dance, an immersive art experience, a cacao ceremony, morning yoga, catered brunch so presumably it was a sleepover,
And then workshops with titles like crypto and NFTs and healing with resonant attention and some others.
The invitation video ends by describing the event as intentional, consensual, alcohol-free, and being a staffed kids zone.
The audience is scattered around the room as Charles gives his talk.
Some are eating at low tables, others are holding children in their laps, and you'll notice the sound of kids and babies is present throughout the 53-minute long talk.
Here we find Eisenstein holding court and inviting questions from what he refers to as a tuned-in place.
Charles sits slightly elevated and holding a mic.
It's undeniably set up with him as a kind of spiritual teacher giving a discourse and guiding the group in contemplative satsang or something.
He even makes a reference at one point in the video to seeing what would come up by opening his channel.
A question, but not yet.
Because first I want to just tune us into the energy of the question, the quest.
And it could be, as I said, disturbance, or it could be curiosity.
Like something could be pushing you out of the old world.
Something can be drawing you into a new world.
Usually both come at the same time.
This is what's happened.
I talked about this a bit last night.
Like, you know, getting pushed out of the old school system, the old food system, the old health care system, maybe some people even the old money system.
These are no longer hospitable.
But it's not just that.
We're not desperate to claw our way back into the old normal, because this whole time we've been beckoned by a new normal.
So there's a push and a pull.
And so the question has this element as well.
So let's just take like a minute or two to not hurry, not hurry to put it into words, but feel the presence of a question in you.
This discontinuity, this pull, this gap in reality.
It may help to put your eyes, but...
Take a couple minutes to feel the presence of a question.
Don't hurry to the words.
Feel the presence of your question.
So there's the setup, and I'll play for you next the first wave of quite earnest questions.
And you'll notice that there's one that particularly stands out.
Why am I here?
How to align desire with purpose.
What are some mantras for balance? - Yes.
What is inquiry?
Working through the heart.
What's the function of liminality in our society right now?
Could you say that again please?
What's the function of liminality in our society right now?
I don't know what that word is.
Space in between.
What story can we tell the children?
What story could I tell my mom?
The last two questions, could you repeat?
What story can we tell the children and what story can I tell my mom?
Where do I go?
Where are we going?
Exploring crisis is opportunity.
How do we get there?
Can we get to where we want to be?
What actions can we take?
How do we love when trauma meets problem?
What is progress?
What is truly efficient?
Will there be concentration camps for unvaccinated people?
What is this crisis revealing about our inner self? - Oh.
Just like that, the perfect snapshot of the conspirituality braid, right?
What are some mantras for balance?
How do we love when trauma meets trauma?
What is progress?
Will there be concentration camps for unvaccinated people?
What is this crisis revealing about our inner selves?
And the next two that I didn't record are where is the juiciness?
And how do I trust and let go when so much feels scary?
Now here's Charles responding.
I've just clipped excerpts from his meandering discourse on the meaning of life, the universe, and the pandemic.
But notice where he goes vis-a-vis the power of word when he gets around to the concentration camp's topic.
Oh, and look out for the transcendent wisdom of Elon Musk, too.
That it's steeped in separation and the mentality of struggle to say, to say, I will.
But this isn't my white privilege here that I'm celebrating and allowing myself this indulgence.
Celebration will make me into a more powerful agent of life and beauty and change.
It will be easy and I won't be Proclaiming a principle of life that life is hard.
And I won't be enacting oppression within myself that is sure to generate oppression in the world around me.
Because the way that we live our lives is a statement of what shall be.
And this leads to one of the other questions like, you know, are the vaccinated going to be put into quarantine camps, concentration camps?
The answer to that question is not outside of ourselves.
That's a question that we answer.
Will it?
What's your answer?
Yes or no?
I spent a lot of time in Iraq where there was torture going on.
And I didn't even know that there was torture going on in the building that I was driving back and forth along every day.
So what I know now is that there was torture going on all across the country.
And it was just for the hell of it.
It was just as like a stress release.
Not really even to get information.
So the question that I'm asking is, Might something like that happen here?
And would our friends and neighbors tolerate the unvaccinated going into places where they're trapped in prisons, having harm done to them?
I mean, the whole crucifixion aspect that like someone faces trials and then a crucifixion in order to come through into the new life.
Yeah, so certainly the possibility exists for this to happen, as you well know.
Because you've seen equivalent things.
So you know that it's possible.
So is it going to happen?
No.
I don't know.
I wrote an essay where I invoked Elon Musk.
And I said, if you ask Elon Musk, What's the future going to be in five years?
He'll tell you.
He won't say, well, it might be this, it might be that, depending on forces outside myself.
He'll be like, oh yeah, I'll tell you what it's going to be in five years.
Everyone will have an electric vehicle, and there'll be 36,000 low-orbit satellites floating around, beaming Wi-Fi on everybody.
He does not-- so I don't resonate with many aspects of the future that Elon Musk speaks into existence.
But I do recognize in him a certain wisdom.
Like, the guy's powerful.
And the particular power that he has developed and claims is the power of word.
He doesn't see himself as a victim of circumstances.
He's like, I'll say how it's going to be.
He's very much in the king archetype.
And I'm like, yeah, what can I learn from the guy, you know?
Where am I abdicating my kingship to An objective reality that I see as beyond myself and see myself helpless in relation to.
What aspect of my power am I unwilling to step into?
And hide behind the, I don't know, hide behind, it depends on what other people do.
And I'm not saying that I can make other people choose any other way than they're choosing.
I recognize like in myself shrinking back from the world when it's like, you know, it's like, like this comes up when we're like, where should we live?
You know, should we stay in Rhode Island?
Should we move to Texas?
You know?
And where we go is like, well, or where I sometimes go is like, okay, well, that depends on what's down the road.
If they're going to have vaccination camps in, you know, they won't have them in Texas, but they might have them in Rhode Island.
So let's wait and see if they're going to happen here.
Then we'll decide if we're going to go to Texas.
And what I'm saying is there's a choice here that I'm unwilling to make.
There's a choice that I, some part of me wants external reality to make for me.
And what part of me doesn't want to fully step into choice?
It comes down to... I'm not necessarily saying that you're like me, okay?
But I'm just... I think maybe my experience might be useful.
It's like... Really, it's like, what part of me is unwilling to be fully incarnated here?
And to say, here... Because I am incarnated.
I have a body, I have a mind, I have hands.
I can arrange things.
I can take up space in the world.
I can dig holes in big buildings.
I can do things, you know?
Because of my incarnation, I have power, as all of us do.
And I had a lot of training and a lot of trauma that made me unwilling to step into that power.
That made me want to shrink back from the world.
Reject myself as an incarnate being, because look at all the harm that men are causing in the world, and I'm a man.
Look at all the harm that human beings are causing in the world, and I'm a human being.
So to shrink back from my gifts as a creator.
And that's why I've been exploring, like, stepping fully into my power, including the power of my word.
But it's really, like, For me, it's daring to take up space in the world.
And to be fully here in the world.
And to say, yeah, here's how it's going to be.
Are there going to be concentration camps for the unvaccinated?
No.
There are not.
There are not.
It's not going to happen.
Why?
Because I said so.
We're not going to let it.
Wow.
It's kind of happening in Australia, though, already, and in China.
They're really, you know, messing with people there.
You know, like, America is a whole other reality, you know, and it's probably because of our Second Amendment that it's not happening in other countries.
You know, so, Elon said that, That government has the legal power to manifest murder on a large scale.
I'll tell you what's going to happen in China.
What's going to happen in China is that the degree of the oppression and the insanity is going to cause eventually the most inspiring, the most awe-inspiring reversal that the most awe-inspiring reversal that you can imagine.
And you can feel the possibility of this.
So when I say, here's what's going to happen, because I said so, it is... That doesn't mean, okay, I said so, now I sit back and don't do anything about it.
That's not how the power of word works.
It's an invitation.
It's a reminder.
And we are aligning, so there's a possibility out there.
There's many possibilities.
We're in the Garden of Forgotten Paths.
We're at the crossroads.
Peace.
Timelines radiate out into the future.
And there's one of those timelines.
You look down that road, and you can see those concentration camps.
And you look down another road, and you can see something luminous.
Beautiful.
Like you know all of these are possible.
And they are possible not in the sense of, let's roll the dice and make it.
They're possible in the sense of, I have agency here.
It's possible.
If I align myself with that future.
And you have special gifts, actually.
The gift of your time in Iraq.
So you are... the reason that this question is eating at you, the reason that it's causing you anguish, the reason that you feel such dismay when you see each step down that pathway is because you cannot rest easy as that happens.
Because your gift and your purpose and your desire calls you to do something about it.
And that's why it bothers you so much.
And so there's...
I don't know what that is.
What is your stew?
But, you know, it may not be some big, grand, loud thing, but you are definitely part of the know.
This is not going to happen.
Yeah, you have your experiences give you a certain clarity and a certain emphasis.
Like you can say that no more emphatically than others because of the gift of your past.
